


kiss me & kill me

by KathrynShadow



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Cataclysm Timeline, Demonic Possession, F/M, First Meetings, Gratuitous Use of Headcanon, Old Lore-Compliant, Strangers to Lovers, because new lore is 85 percent bad and it should feel 85 percent bad, the du Couteaus stick together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:24:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/pseuds/KathrynShadow
Summary: 8. the one where your soulmate’s first words to you are written on your body.--Please, don't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rennfri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rennfri/gifts).



> I have like 4 actual prompts that I was actually prompted for reals that I should be working on but noOOOOoooOOOOOoooo

_Your Highness._

Well. That narrows it down.

* * *

 

_Please, don't._

Katarina has been worried about the words on her skin ever since she was old enough to catch their implications. She's spent more time than she could reasonably measure, let alone be willing to admit, agonizing over the punctuation of all things; does it indicate calm or resignation? Even if their speaker were screaming them aloud, would it show? Would whatever fate it is etching the words into being even know—or care—to transcribe the relevant emotion?

(It's part of why she's so careful not to be spotted before she kills, why she prefers slit throats over pierced hearts. With every victim who doesn't get the chance to speak, there's another reassurance that she hasn't committed that one particular sin. Not yet.)

For the most part, she simply tries not to think of it. It's best not to. Her mother's murder is proof enough that being bound to an assassin can't possibly end well; it's more merciful this way. Katarina can't get attached to someone who doesn't survive their first encounter, and at least dying by her hand will be as quick and painless as she can make it.

It's better this way.

* * *

She's never met the Prince of Demacia in person before, and she's going to accuse the Institute of treason with him. Crownguard could have been her backup in this, but he thought that the allegations would carry more weight if they came from Jarvan's lips; and for her part, she doesn't trust anyone in High Command with this.

At least she's never heard anything  _bad_ about the Prince that she hasn't heard of every notable Demacian. Crownguard said he was a reasonable man, but of course he would feel obligated to speak positively of the Crown. Whatever (justified in this case, given his past with Swain) hatred Jarvan IV has for Noxians, he can presumably at least put it aside for this.

The hall is far from empty when Kat slips inside, but Jarvan is difficult to miss even without his armor. She can tell even from a distance that he's at least a head taller than she is; his back is straight, his hands folded behind himself as he observes his surroundings. He spots her almost instantly and begins making his way carefully towards her.

She can't quite parse his facial expression, but it doesn't seem to be anything particularly negative, at least. She makes herself relax. The residual magic washing through the Institute grounds is putting her on edge; that's all.

Kat doesn't bow when she approaches him, but she does lower her head in acknowledgement, just a little. "Your Highness," she says. It feels safely neutral.

Prince Jarvan blinks at her in surprise, and then almost grimaces. "Please, don't," he says with an uncomfortable little laugh.

Katarina feels the blood drain from her face.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you alright?”
> 
> Katarina shakes her head sharply as if she can knock the creeping horror out of her skull by force. “Fine,” she says, almost snaps. It isn’t convincing. “It’s nothing important.”
> 
> —
> 
> In which Katarina is not fine and her siblings aren't fooled by her bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha oops I did this for like 2/3 of NaNo instead of any of the things I SHOULD have been working on
> 
> Relevant things thrown the fuck out from lore:  
> 1\. Geography! I don't remember much of the old map and I have some vehement disagreements with the new one. TL;DR: Zaun and Noxus share a small chunk of border.  
> 1a. Noxus is geographically small and the land is garbage, thus why it has to steal everything from its neighbors and why it developed its whole "I'll kick your ass, I'll kick my own ass"/"if you die because I stabbed you in the back then you deserved it for not seeing the stab coming" culture. It is not the sprawling mess that Riot has recently decided that it is.  
> 1b. Demacia, on the other hand, IS a sprawling mess with a very old habit of constant expansion that they swear they've broken out of, really!!
> 
> One of these days I'll have all of my Noxus notes written down and posted but it is not this day.

“Lady d—” Jarvan says, before he seems to catch his own misstep, remember that he objected to the use of his own noble rank only seconds beforehand. Katarina would laugh, except… “Blade,” he settles on instead (which, to his credit, is actually the more respectful of the titles she bears; whether it’s merely a lucky guess or whether he gives a damn about—doesn’t matter, it doesn’t _matter_ ). “Are you alright?”

Katarina shakes her head sharply as if she can knock the creeping horror out of her skull by force. “Fine,” she says, almost snaps. It isn’t convincing. “It’s nothing important.”

And it isn’t. This changes nothing. Hells, this might not even _mean_ anything; it’s not like her predicted words are a rare combination. People say it all the time. People have said it to her before (just not as their first words ever) and nothing came of it then (but why does it feel so important, so vital, like this is it and this is right and correct in the worst way it could be) and it’s _nothing. Important._

Compulsively, Kat’s fingers find her forearm, skate over the leather and thin fabric covering the mark on her skin. She doesn’t need to make sure it’s still in place; she’s been wearing a bondmask since she was out of swaddling blankets, just like every other unmatched Noxian. Still, for just a second, she felt…

Jarvan’s—Lightshield's— _the Prince’s_ eyes flicker down to follow the movement. His brow was already furrowed in confusion, or concern, or both, but the line smooths out all at once, his expression fading out into one she can’t immediately parse.

Katarina slipped and fell out of a tree when she was seven. She remembers the sick feeling of weightlessness, that single second of sheer unbridled panic before the earth came up to meet her and she snapped her arm in half. This feels the same, but endless—over and over, second after second of freefall. Lightshield is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but it’s not exactly skintight down to the wrists, and she doesn’t dare look down. Demacians are less cautious about that kind of thing, the fear that someone will see their mark and try to use it against them, to manipulate them; if she tries to look, then he’ll know her reasons, and that’s—that’s even more untenable than the rest of this fucking godforsaken mess.

(But he knows. He knows. Katarina can see it, that careful blankness in his expression. Around them, the other people in the Institute brush past, either not noticing or not caring about what’s happening right in front of them. She’s holding her breath, waiting to hit the ground.)

“Right,” says Lightshield, looking away and nodding slightly. There’s nothing even slightly strange about his voice, at least not anything that she can hear; if he needed to collect himself, it doesn’t show.

Katarina wants to know how he can be so calm about this, why her—her—

_(she can’t think about this, not now, not yet, not ever)_

—why he’s supposed to be tied to her, part of her on some intrinsic level that no one has adequately been able to explain, and yet none of his composure is finding its way into her.

“Shall we…?” he asks, gesturing towards a hall that’s slightly less populous. “I’d rather we get a chance to actually _prepare_ before we say anything, and this isn’t an ideal place for it.”

Yes. This changes nothing. This might not even have been anything in the first place. Katarina swallows, nods her acquiescence. “I’m not very good with speeches anyway,” she manages.

The Prince gives her a polite, impassive laugh as he turns away. “You don’t have to be,” he answers, and she’s trying to figure out whether it’s an attempt at reassurance or an indictment of her actual career when she sees it. It’s quick, casual, almost nothing at all. On any other day, she wouldn’t have even noticed it.

Lightshield reaches up, rubs his right thumb quickly over his left wrist, as though soothing a muscle cramp.

* * *

They don’t talk about it. It might just be because they still don’t have full privacy in the side room, but Katarina hopes that he’s pretending—just as she is—that there’s nothing to talk about. He agrees to do the bulk of the talking for the actual confrontation with the Summoners; her own apparent (accidental) status as Noxian diplomat wasn’t something she’d specifically trained for, not like he had. She can’t say she doesn’t appreciate him taking point on this.

Past that, there isn’t much to say. He is polite with her—and not even in the overbearing, insincere way that she expected from Demacians—but distant. He doesn’t seem to hold her allegiance against her, or even her loyalties being bound to the Grand General who captured and tormented him all those years ago. They work well together in the hours that they have to, and then they part ways. The people with the Journal of Justice ensure that they can’t talk again after they’re done with the Summoners, and she wouldn’t seek Lightshield out again even if she had the chance.

She likes him well enough, she guesses. Certainly, there were far worse people that she could be bonded to.

If she had to meet her soulmate at all, anyway, isn’t it for the best that it’s someone like him? He’s too far away for her to encounter him often. No one knows about the bond but the two of them, and it would be just as disastrous for him as for her if that were to change. He’s too unlikely and well-protected a target for her to be sent after him, at least as anything other than a suicide mission.

And Kat never has to talk to him again if she doesn’t want to, at least outside of Institute business.

* * *

Katarina is shaken, but she holds herself together, and she believes everyone at the Institute is too preoccupied with her actual mission to take note of it. By the time she’s on the train back to the Zaun-Noxus border, she’s pretty sure she’s finished working through the… the situation. When she steps back through the front door of the du Couteau estate, she even feels something approximating calm.

“Something wrong, sister?”

Until Cassiopeia, as per usual, instantly finds a way to shatter it.

Kat stiffens in the second before she remembers how quickly her sister will notice it. And then she gives up when she realizes that if Cassie already thinks that something is up and she’s right, then it doesn’t matter what Katarina does.

(Or the snake is just messing with her, fishing to see if Kat reacts to anything that Cassiopeia implies is there, drawing her conclusions purely off of that.)

Katarina starts feeling the beginnings of a headache only seconds after entering her own godsdamned home. “Yes,” she says shortly, not looking up as she pulls off her jacket. Cassiopeia always keeps the house warmer than anyone else wants it when no one thinks to stop her. “You’re speaking.”

The entryway is large, but functional, the decoration sparse compared to the casual excess of the Institute. The walls, floor, and ceiling alike are all made of the same flat grey stone, the whole estate carved out of the living rock of the mountainside with no effort wasted to conceal it. The door is on the small side—an old Noxian architectural quirk from when this place needed safety by concealment—and the hallway it led to was cramped, but the room at the end of that hallway is fairly expansive, providing a bottleneck. It’s an even square, halls branching off in front of her and to the right, leading deeper into the manor. To the left, an enormous fireplace crackles, a couch to one side and her father’s armchair facing the door.

Squarely in between, spread out in languid loops to expose as much of her serpentine lower half to the heat as possible, Cassiopeia lounges on a low cushion wreathed in blankets. Katarina glances at her just long enough to make sure there’s no accusation in those piercing eyes before she returns her attention to her gear.

Kat doesn’t see her sister move, but she hears the subtle brushing of scales as Cassiopeia stretches on her nest of fabric. There’s a soft sound of far too many joints popping one by one, two meters of coiling spine reordering itself. It used to make her want to shudder; now, it’s just another annoyance. “I can’t be concerned for my family?” Cassiopeia asks. “What do you take me for?”

Katarina shoots her a glare, but Cassiopeia just seems pleased that she’s being looked at at all, giving a small smile like she’s somehow won a game no one else was playing. “I think you’re bored,” Kat says, unclipping the belt of knives across her hips. “And you think the way around it is by trying to catch me in something.”

“So there’s something to catch you in?” Cassiopeia moves forward, the muscles under her emerald scales rippling her away from her perch. She must be in an investigative mood to move away from the fireplace. “Fascinating.”

A dull pain in her jaw reminds Katarina to unclench her teeth. Cassiopeia is definitely just messing with her; she wouldn’t be twisting her words around so blatantly if there was anything concrete. “Nothing that you don’t already know,” she lies, and prays—as much as she knows that any gods, let alone her own, won’t care to listen—that it isn’t obvious.

“Hmm,” Cassiopeia says. Her scales scratch gently against the stone floor as she approaches. Her slitted eyes are alight with interest, but her expression doesn’t give anything away but amused curiosity.

There are many things Kat doesn’t envy her little sister for. She just has to remind herself of that from time to time.

“You’re remarkably snappish for someone whose meeting with the Institute went so well,” Cassiopeia says, drawing herself up a little taller than what her full height used to be—and a lot taller than Katarina. “Even for you, this is strange.”

“Let’s see,” Katarina snipes back, instinctively straightening as though she had any height advantage in the first place. “I had to go to the Institute,” she says, counting off on her fingers, her jacket slung forgotten over her forearm. (Over the bondmask, where her skin still stings just slightly in psychosomatic pain.) “I had to speak to the Summoners. I worked alongside _Demacians._ I was accused of treason. The people accusing me were Summoners from my own fucking country.” She switches hands. “I had to come back home through the Zaun mountain pass instead of Bilgewater and the train was as stable and functional as ever. I’m _tired_ of answering questions and now my own sister has decided it’s time to join in, just because she thinks it’s fun.”

Cassiopeia raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t have a hair on her body anymore, not these days, but even when she's at home by herself she insists on concealing that fact and drawing them back on. (Katarina never really understood the habit. Everyone knew what she was, but most especially the people living in the du Couteau estate. Besides, it wasn’t as though she could pass for human anymore; why try to cling to the small details when the rest of her transformation was so extreme?) “Well, then,” she says. “Something really _is_ wrong, isn’t it?”

That wasn’t real concern. It couldn’t be. Cassiopeia hadn’t—Cassiopeia didn’t—

Nothing she said was real. Very few of the things she did were, either. Kat knew she could trust her sister with her life—no matter what Cassiopeia got up to, she would never intentionally harm her own family—but her secrets? No.

Katarina makes herself look at Cassiopeia. “Nothing is wrong,” she says. It is technically true. “And if something was, it wouldn’t have anything to do with you.” Also true. Because the only way that Katarina’s predicament could possibly affect anyone else is if she tried to act on it. Which she won’t.

So there’s nothing to discuss.

Cassiopeia doesn’t seem convinced, but her mouth only tightens slightly; she doesn’t press any further. “You know I could help,” she says toothlessly.

“No,” Kat corrects. “You can’t.” Which is as good as an outright admission of guilt, she realizes barely a second later, biting back a wince.

For once, her sister is merciful. “As you say, then,” she murmurs, brushing her fingertips against Kat’s forearm as she slithers forward and away.

(It’s only a coincidence, Kat knows. She can’t help the shiver of panic that goes through her anyway.)

Cassiopeia passes by, vanishing down the hall without another word. The fire is still going, and Katarina knows that it would ordinarily be hours before her sister abandoned its warmth, but she still finds herself being left to collect her thoughts uninterrupted.

Kat squeezes her hands tight to keep her fingers from shaking, biting her lip against an irrational, traitorous prickle at the corners of her eyes.

(Gods above, she really must look like shit.)

* * *

She successfully makes it all the way to her room without anyone else interrupting. A few people pass by her, nods and quiet murmured acknowledgements, but she can get away with just nodding back and she’s left alone.

Talon is already in her quarters when she gets there, perched on the narrow windowsill. Katarina doesn’t even see him until she closes the door and flicks on the caged magelight, and her chest clenches sharply in startled terror before she recognizes who the shape belongs to.

 _“Fucking—”_ She takes a breath, pinches the bridge of her nose, wills her heart to slow back down. “Don’t _do_ that.”

Talon tilts his head at her. She doesn’t know if he means to say _do what?_ or _who did you think it was?_ but either way, she flushes hot in embarrassment.

“It’s been a long day,” she mumbles by way of any real explanation, dropping her discarded gear on her desk instead of putting it in any order. From the corner, she can feel her brother’s eyes watching the movement.

“Cassiopeia said you were upset,” he says. He’s barely audible, but there’s no telling whether it’s out of courtesy for her privacy or just because he’s not a very loud man.

“It’s been,” Katarina repeats, her voice so tightly controlled that it wouldn’t be able to fool a godsdamned child, “a long day.”

Talon says nothing. He doesn’t move. It shouldn’t feel more compelling to her than Cassiopeia’s direct questions, but there have been a lot of things lately that shouldn’t have felt the way they did. Kat laughs bitterly, shaking her head.

“It’s been a long week,” she corrects herself. She was tired before; passing the threshold of her home feels like it’s sapped the last of the energy out of her. She doesn’t have to go any farther, she can rest, and now it’s impossible to do anything but. “I don’t need to tell you about the Institute meetings.”

Her brother doesn’t dignify the obvious with a reply.

Katarina presses her lips tightly shut as if to physically stop herself from speaking. She realizes, belatedly, that she’s halfway to rubbing her arm with her thumb _(like he did)_ and drops both hands in her lap, twisting her fingers together, watching her knuckles turn white with tension.

Talon silently gets up from the window and takes the handful of steps to close the distance between them. Slowly, fluidly, he sits at her side and watches her hands with her. His weight on the mattress tilts her slightly towards him and that’s the only reason her shoulder ends up pressed against his, really. She’s not a child, he wasn’t even here when she was, and even when she was younger she didn’t need comfort like this.

(Not for something this… this stupid, at least.)

Her vision blurs. There’s a stab of horror in her gut when she realizes it. The pressure behind her tongue grows and it feels like it will physically hurt _not_ to choke the words out, but she can’t possibly do that. It’s not…

(Saying it aloud won’t make it worse. Keeping quiet won’t stop it from being real.)

Kat takes a breath. It hitches. Talon doesn’t move either closer or farther away, keeps his eyes trained on the floor when she raises a hand to cover her mouth, pressing her knuckles to her lips until her teeth break the soft skin behind them.

The taste of blood makes it easier to focus, harder to stop. She doesn’t even know why she’s crying. She’s not even completely sure what emotion she’s feeling, just that a fat teardrop lands on the side of her marked wrist and slides its way under the mask.

She has a lot of practice with crying silently. Being still is harder. And she thinks…

Talon won’t ask. He won’t say anything after this. He probably won’t even say anything _now._ But most importantly, most especially, he won’t ask.

And that’s exactly why so much of her wants to tell him. If just one person knows— gods, she can’t think of a reason why, but it might be easier to deal with. It certainly can’t make it any harder, can it?

She drops her hand, takes a couple of deep, shuddering breaths, eyes shut tight. “It’s stupid,” she says, or tries to. Her throat is so tight that it comes out voiceless, barely a whisper with the shape of a few consonants.

So speaking it aloud is out of the question anyway, at least right now. (Perhaps she shouldn’t be so relieved about that.) Instead, Katarina reaches for the strings of the bondmask, starts picking the looped knots apart with shaking fingers.

Talon doesn’t move either to help her or to stop her. She would have thought he didn’t even feel anything about the action at all, except for the way she can hear his breath still in his throat. His pose stays exactly the same, the casual not-quite-relaxation of a cat who knows it’s safe _for now_ but is still keeping its ears perked, but he freezes in it.

She wonders if he’s figured it all out already. To be fair, there were very few people in the building that either one of them would find exactly _acceptable_ to be bonded to—but on the other hand, she’d met quite a few of them before. Lightshield just… tended to avoid the Noxian envoys as much as possible. She doubted he ever spoke to them unless forced, and that situation had been just fine by her this entire time.

The fabric loosens and she pulls it away. Underneath, there’s a stark line marking the divide of skin that hasn’t seen the sun in decades, veins sharp blue and painfully visible. And the words. Those fucking words that she spent her whole life fearing the meaning of.

(She knows she doesn’t have to explain that part to Talon, at least.)

Katarina keeps very still as her brother examines the script. Their father had been the one to teach him to read, back when he was still an angry, mistrusting kid, only just then getting enough nourishment to start thinking about puberty. Now that he’s an angry, mistrusting adult, he’s much better at it—but he’s still slow, and she knows that handwriting is harder for him than printed text.

Talon takes a breath as if to speak, but thinks better of it. Instead, he finally raises his hands from where they’ve been resting on his lap. _Who?_ he signs: a clean, subtle gesture, barely a flick of his fingers.

Relief almost makes Kat shiver. For all either one of them know, Cassiopeia could be waiting at the door, listening. For all _Kat_ knows, her sister’s transformation included superhuman hearing, too.

He really won’t tell anyone. She knew that, but…

Katarina takes a breath, brushes her hair out of her eyes. _Demacia,_ she signs back. Noxian signing doesn’t have a word for _prince,_ and like hell is she going to switch languages on Talon like that. _Little Grand General,_ she indicates instead.

Talon’s lips twitch at the translation, but it’s the only glint of humor in him. He’s not so unnaturally still anymore, apparently having gotten over the initial shock of her revelation fairly quickly, but his relative lack of tension doesn’t seem like a positive one.

 _Sorry,_ he signs, after a very long pause, and then he folds his hands back in his lap.

Katarina nods. “No need,” she says quietly. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it. And this is… probably better for me than…”

Talon watches her face until he apparently deems it clear that she won’t be continuing that line of thought. “Still,” he says.

He doesn’t do much, just lays a hand on her back, his palm between her shoulder blades. He lets her decide to turn towards him, hide her face in the crook of his neck, and that’s when the tears start up again. Katarina doesn’t make a sound, but she balls her fist in the fabric of his shirt, squeezing her eyes as tight as she can as she allows herself to be held.

A quarter of an hour passes in silence before the shivers stop, leaving her wrung out and drained. Katarina just breathes into her brother’s shoulder for another minute or so before her dignity returns and she pulls away.

She doesn’t thank him. He doesn’t ask her to.

“Rest,” he says instead.

Katarina huffs a laugh. It’s about all that she has the energy for. “You sound like Papa,” she says. Her tongue feels thick from crying. Bringing their father up is probably a mistake when she’s already feeling so chipped, but it’s the only thing she can think of to say.

Talon smiles silently, one of the rarest ones he has, starting in his eyes and actually managing to reach his mouth.

He doesn’t thank her either. They both understand.

* * *

Katarina prefers showering, generally. It’s faster, for one, and she doesn’t particularly view her personal hygiene as anything more than a task to be performed to keep herself functional. It’s Cassiopeia who usually uses the bath to curl up in for an unreasonably long time, draining and refilling the water as it gets cold; sometimes it’s Talon, maybe just to remind himself that he has that option.

Today, though. She’s exhausted, sore from sitting so long in one position on the train, sorer still from the journey from the mountain pass to her home. She won’t be able to avoid speaking to the other inhabitants of the house forever, but her siblings will at least give her privacy in here, and the staff won’t try to find her unless they know she’s available to be found.

Kat draws the bath hotter than anything that could be called comfortable, easing herself down into it before the tub is done filling, and resolves firmly not to think about anything.

The script on her forearm feels like it’s taunting her. She could cover it up again; of course she could. There are washcloths here. She could wrap one around her arm like a half-sleeve and not have to look at it.

(But it wouldn’t change anything. And it’s not like it matters in the first place, anyway.)

Katarina rests her hands in her lap, the words upturned. _After all of this,_ she thinks. The corner of her mouth twitches and she can’t even say to herself whether it’s a smile or a frown. She’d been worrying about that godsdamned message ever since she was old enough to know what being an assassin really meant. In all that time… it had never occurred to her that it would be disastrous for a _different_ reason.

She’s turned this whole situation in her head a thousand times. She knows it’s for the best, in the end, at least for her, but she still can’t get over the pang of… loss? Disappointment. Disappointment is definitely a better word for this. She didn’t lose anything.

(Katarina thought she’d choked the last of any childish romanticism out of herself a long time ago. Apparently she was wrong.)

Kat turns the spout off with her foot and sinks into the water up to her chin, tilting her head back to look at the ceiling. Absentmindedly, she scratches at her arm, wondering what Lightshield is up to. The Institute’s city was built to be as equidistant between the founding countries as it could be, but Demacia takes up half of the livable continent by itself. He’s probably still on his way back to the capital.

(Why is she thinking about this?)

He’s probably even more disappointed in the situation than she is. Assuming he knows—but he’s not stupid. (He wouldn’t be alive if he were a complete idiot.) He saw her face, and she saw his compulsive twitch towards his own mark, and she may not be particularly good at talking to people but she can read them well enough when she has to. He knew.

And it had to have hurt.

(Why did she _care_ if it did?)

She doesn’t. She shouldn’t. She _doesn’t,_ and it’s just some… some quirk of their bond, forcing her to give a damn. But she doesn’t, and she doesn’t appreciate being tricked into thinking that she does, and if she just works her way through this then she’ll know the truth in that.

Katarina huffs, scowling upwards at no one.

There isn’t exactly a specific, dedicated age for Demacian nobles to start getting married and continuing their lines. But it strikes her as odd that Jarvan—that Lightshield has gone on for this long without even a peep of it. He’s going to inherit the godsdamned country and he has no siblings. It’s not like the whole family ends with him if he drops dead, but it’s… strange.

She doesn’t know the first thing about him, not beyond the obvious. It doesn’t seem… unreasonable… that he would be holding his breath all this time, just waiting, because if he had a mark at all then there had to be _someone_ out there and if he just waited to meet them—

He’s not an idiot. But she’s seen him speak, now, heard how the people directly under him talk about him. _Relentlessly idealistic_ feels like it might be accurate, along with _too stubborn for his own good._

So yes. Somewhere out there, halfway across Demacia, Lightshield is probably disappointed. Crushed, maybe, if she’s feeling dramatic.

 _He’ll get over it,_ Katarina reasons, and slips the rest of the way beneath the water. The same as she will.

(The pang in her chest is just from holding her breath.)


End file.
